


Some Quests are Doomed from the Start

by themousewitch



Series: accidental blessings [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anathema is TRYING SO HARD, Aziraphale and Crowley are bad at their own feelings, F/M, Gen, M/M, Newt is insightful and also clueless, Newton Pulsifer's sad computer allergy, Slice of Life, listen I'm just fooling around in my own 'verse here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 13:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20210506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themousewitch/pseuds/themousewitch
Summary: Life goes on after the apocalypse. Some things change.Some don't.





	Some Quests are Doomed from the Start

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a silly little self-indulgent slice of life ficlet set in the same 'verse as It Always Ends in the Gavotte. You were all so lovely and kind in the comments there that I made more, so you know.
> 
> This is all your fault.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Life had settled into a sort of new normal, though Newt was not entirely sure anything about his life was ever going to settle into anything truly resembling _normal_. He’d been doomed since he’d walked into Shadwell’s flat and taken the post of Witchfinder Private.

It had been two weeks, and the only word he’d had from Shadwell since the Airbase Incident had been a cryptic text so riddled with spelling and/or grammatical errors that it had become the textual equivalent of a letter someone had spilled very strong tea over. Newt had attempted to retire, but so far as he could figure Shadwell had managed it first; the Witchfinder Army lived on in Newt, at least through the end of the quarter, which was just fine with Newt as he had found himself a very special witch indeed.

Anathema was everything he had ever hoped to find in a partner. She was forthright and capable. She was funny and smart. She was also wonderfully strange in her own right, enough that she had never gone out of her way to make him feel self-conscious of his own innate _Newt_-ness—which he had once overheard his aunt describe as a never-ending string of bad luck and broken electronics.

Anathema didn’t care that he still had a flip phone and she didn’t mind that he couldn’t be trusted with complicated electronics. Anathema believed that cellphone and computer radiation was dangerous anyway, and had insisted that life with Newt would reduce her overall risk of certain types of cancer. Still, she had spent one very involved afternoon attempting to convince the tablet computer that it could look at Newt without melting down. As forms of denial went, Newt supposed that one had been particularly expensive.

But Anathema was determined to make it work, because Anathema was determined to prove that she could do things without Agnes’s help.

And so Newt sat in the reading area of Tadfield Rare Books and Comics while Aziraphale desperately raised the price of a tome she’d picked out from the Occult section and Anathema just as desperately agreed to pay it.

“He’s not going to sell her that book, is he?” Newt asked Crowley, who lurked genially on the couch across from Newt’s armchair.

“Give it a minute,” Crowley said, and flipped the page. He was reading what might have been the original Beowulf, untranslated.

“It’s not for sale!” Aziraphale said eventually, eyes wide.

Newt cringed.

Fondness flickered across Crowley’s face.

“There it is,” Crowley said, over Anathema’s insistence that it had been on the shelf, and there was a price sticker _right there_. “What’s she trying to buy, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Newt said miserably, and then, “Something to let us Skype her mother. She wants to introduce us.”

“Sell her the book, angel!” Crowley shouted.

“The Hell I will—oh, fine! Take it. Priced as marked,” Aziraphale said sulkily.

Newt wondered how he should feel about watching two celestial beings operate at this level of pettiness and then quickly switched to wondering how he should feel about meeting the woman Anathema insisted was his future mother-in-law.

\--

“I forgive you,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, because he knew it would annoy Crowley nearly as much as being made to sell one of his books had Aziraphale.

Crowley made a supremely satisfying grumble. “.. forgive _you,_” he muttered, and Aziraphale brightened.

It was unhealthy to hold a grudge, after all. Aziraphale was sure he’d read that somewhere.

\--

“I’ve made a terrible mistake!” Anathema cried. She had woken, sweat-soaked and tearful, from a nightmare full of blank cards and an improbable amount of spinach. It was dark in Jasmine Cottage, and the nighttime sounds through the open window were obscenely calm. It had no business being so serene outside, Anathema thought viciously. The world had nearly ended a fortnight ago, hardly anyone seemed to remember it, and even she would have forgotten if she didn’t have to adjust to the near-constant cognitive dissonance of Misters Crowley and Fell.

Newt snored on. Anathema shoved his shoulder. Then she shoved it again harder.

“Urhum?” Newt said, blinking. He sat up.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake!”

Newt scrubbed his face and yawned. Anathema shoved him again.

“Right, sorry. Is this about the book?” Newt asked.

“Of course it’s about the book! How could it not be about the book?” Anathema cried, and then, “Wait, how did you know it was about the book?”

“’Course it’s about the book. It was always going to be about the book,” Newt said, squinting. He fumbled blindly on the night table. “I need my glasses for this.”

“Right,” Anathema said, relieved. Newt was right, this was a glasses kind of conversation. Anathema was good at glasses conversations. Every conversation worth _having_ was a glasses conversation.

She nodded smartly to herself, put her own glasses on, and then leaned over Newt to the other nightstand and put his glasses into his still fumbling hand.

“Thanks,” Newt mumbled. He put his glasses on and sat up, entirely unaware of the effect his declaration had had. “Anyway, I reckon that she’d have predicted you burning it, right? Probably have it mailed to us again in twenty years, or maybe to any kids you have. Or might have. If you have kids—”

“If _we_ have kids,” Anathema corrected him gently. She hadn’t known him long, but Agnes had already told them as much with the package, and Anathema felt like living through Armageddon probably showed you if a man could be trusted or not. “Oh, um. That probably sounds crazy. Sorry.”

“You have got to meet Shadwell. And you’ve met my boss. Bosses? Anyway Shadwell is even more—on second thought, I think Aziraphale is enough, please never meet Shadwell,” Newt said, and he was laughing and she was laughing and everything was okay because she wasn’t that crazy girlfriend.

Or she might be, but everything and everyone else had gone crazy too, and that made it all right.

Anathema leaned forward and kissed Newt impulsively. Maybe she loved him a little bit already, with his terrible car and its terrible name, and the way he never seemed fazed by the strangeness that saturated her life. Stranger things had happened, after all. Recently.

“Mmm. Are you all right now? Does this mean we can go back to sleep?” Newt asked. Anathema smiled at him.

“You fixed it,” she told him, because it was his very favorite thing to hear and it was also true.

\--

“So what’s the plan, angel?” Crowley said finally. He was stretched across the couch in the Tadfield shop. He had been asking the question in a dozen different ways over the past week and Aziraphale had been steadfastly mute on the subject. Crowley found it quite vexing, and he found that vexation even more unnerving. Six thousand long years he’d lived—and that was just counting from the Fall, from when time had become time and not just an eternity—six thousand long, aimless years and now he was annoyed to find himself _impatient_.

“The plan for what?” Aziraphale asked pleasantly. He was still on the bloody philosophers, worse than before; he was at the desk reading something in the original Greek and _making notes_.

“Oh come on, you’ve already made me say it.”

Aziraphale sighed and rubbed his eyebrow, leaving behind a smudge of ink that left Crowley unspeakably annoyed and fond.

“There is no plan, Crowley,” Aziraphale said finally. “We’re standing by.”

Crowley all but slithered up and off the couch. “You mean we’re actually listening to that twaddle?” he demanded.

“You’re the one who said we were on our own side,” Aziraphale reminded him, and Crowley’s brain cells did that thing where they dropped every thought that wasn’t about kissing Aziraphale like a collective bunch of hot potatoes.

Crowley snapped his fingers and shuttered the shop, advanced, and proceeded to kiss his old enemy stupid.

“What was that for?” Aziraphale asked some time later.

“Figure it out,” Crowley told him. Aziraphale loved puzzles. Crowley was determined to remain one.

“I look forward to it,” Aziraphale said, which was a very satisfying response indeed.

Crowley kissed him some more.

“I thought we might stay here in Tadfield for a bit,” Aziraphale said after another long while. He kissed Crowley one last, luxurious time before he pulled back and un-shuttered the shop with a flick of the wrist.

Crowley put his sunglasses back on and walked outside. The building had gained a second floor. “You could’ve just asked me to look, you know.”

“People ask questions,” Aziraphale said miserably as Crowley came back in. “Newt keeps asking if I want him to work more.”

“He’ll sell your things. You should fire him,” Crowley said.

“You sold my things yesterday.” Aziraphale scowled.

Crowley thought about the way Aziraphale had looked, panting and utterly wrecked, pale fingers clutched in Crowley’s sheets nearly a week before.

Aziraphale then blushed and scowled, which was an improvement. 

“Why _did_ you insist I sell that one? I never asked.”

“I’m the last person to stand in between humanity and knowledge, angel.”

Aziraphale regarded him with the same skepticism he usually reserved for traffic wardens and the businessmen in dark clothes who sometimes liked to comment on the flammability of his Soho bookshop.

Crowley grinned, caught. “She wants to video chat with her mother and introduce him,” he confided gleefully. “It’ll be disastrous.”

Aziraphale sighed, but his mouth quirked in the briefest of smiles. They both returned to their respective endeavors, Crowley’s being to catch the good afternoon sunlight and Aziraphale’s something tiresome involving Socrates or Democritus or something.

“What about you?” Aziraphale said eventually. Crowley, who had been beginning to doze, woke somewhat resentfully.

“What about me, angel?”

Aziraphale held very still, looking carefully at his notes as if they might disappear if he stopped working on them.

Crowley was in love with an idiot.

“I’m staying here in Tadfield, you idiot.” Crowley said. He’d gotten quite good with human feelings as a demon—it was rather crucial to the job—but his own were another matter entirely.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, non-committal, and then, “Excuse me-”

“If the shoe fits. My flat’s uninhabitable, thanks to you.” Crowley said, and then flung himself backwards on the sofa. He could feel Aziraphale’s eyes on him, and he arranged himself to look as attractively impenetrable as possible. Crowley had decided to keep the flat, at any rate, reasoning that any demon who came looking would be in for a nasty surprise. When they had left, the white had spread all the way out to the kitchen. Crowley hadn’t even been able to rescue his plants.

He could feel Aziraphale nearly rise to the bait and then abandon the effort. He’d been doing that a lot, since the apocalypse hadn’t happened. It was worrying.

Well, somewhat worrying, anyway. If Crowley worried too hard about it, he’d end up thinking about feelings again.

“I mean, if it’s just you and me, then I suppose Tadfield’s the new Head Office, eh?” Crowley ventured eventually.

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. No more paperwork!” Aziraphale brightened.

“No more memos about frivolous miracles,” Crowley reminded him, secretly pleased when Aziraphale brightened further. They could, Crowley supposed, remake the world together the way Adam had been intended to do. Except that humanity was much cleverer than Hell or Heaven had ever believed, and aside from the 14th century, Crowley supposed they were remaking the world just fine on their own.

It wasn’t worth the effort. No angel or demon would ever have invented sushi or television, and Crowley was looking forward to finding out what exactly humanity might make of itself now that it was past its expiration date, so to speak.

“No more Gabriel,” Aziraphale said happily, unaware that his excitement would very soon be proven to be entirely unfounded.

\--

“Hi Mom,” Anathema said to the computer screen, beaming. The circle and all the oh-so-complicated runes had worked. Newt stood out of range of the video, shaking his head helplessly. Anathema took his hand and pulled him into the frame. “I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Newt.”

Something inside her tablet made a kind of chittering electronic cry and the screen went black.

“Mom?” said Anathema.

“We should really unplug that,” Newt said.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Anathema said hopefully.

The lights in Jasmine cottage flickered mightily and died.


End file.
